Verner's Pride eBook

CHAPTER VIII.

ROBIN’S VOW.

The revelation at the inquest had affected Mr. Verner
in no measured degree, greatly increasing, for the
time, his bodily ailments. He gave orders to
be denied to all callers; he could not bear the comments
that would be made. An angry, feverish desire
to find out who had played the traitor grew strong
within him. Innocent, pretty, child-like Rachel!
who was it that had set himself, in his wickedness,
deliberately to destroy her? Mr. Verner now deemed
it more than likely that she had been the author of
her own death. It was of course impossible to
tell: but he dwelt on that part of the tragedy
less than on the other. The one injury was uncertain;
the other was a fact.

What rendered it all the more obscure was the absence
of any previous grounds of suspicion. Rachel
had never been observed to be on terms of intimacy
with any one. Luke Roy had been anxious to court
her, as Verner’s Pride knew; but Rachel had
utterly repudiated the wish. Luke it was not.
And who else was there?

The suspicions of Mr. Verner veered, almost against
his will, towards those of his own household.
Not to Lionel; he honestly believed Lionel to be too
high-principled: but towards his step-sons.
He had no particular cause to suspect either of them,
unless the testimony of Mrs. Duff’s son about
the tall gentleman could furnish it; and it may be
said that his suspicion strayed to them only from
the total absence of any other quarter to fix it upon.
Of the two, he could rather fix upon John, than Frederick.
No scandal, touching Frederick, had ever reached his
ears: plenty of it touching John. In fact,
Mr. Verner was rather glad to help in shipping John
off to some faraway place, for he considered him no
credit to Verner’s Pride, or benefit to the neighbourhood.
Venial sins sat lightly on the conscience of John
Massingbird.

But this was no venial sin, no case of passing scandal;
and Mr. Verner declared to that gentleman that if
he found him guilty, he would discard him from Verner’s
Pride without a shilling of help. John Massingbird
protested, in the strongest terms, that he was innocent
as Mr. Verner himself.

A trifling addition was destined to be brought to
the suspicion already directed by Mr. Verner towards
Verner’s Pride. On the night of the inquest
Mr. Verner had his dinner served in his study—­the
wing of a fowl, of which he ate about a fourth part.
Mrs. Tynn attended on him: he liked her to do
so when he was worse than usual. He was used to
her, and he would talk to her when he would not to
others. He spoke about what had happened, saying
that he felt as if it would shorten his life.
He would give anything, he added, half in self-soliloquy,
to have the point cleared up of who it was young Duff
had seen in the lane. Mrs. Tynn answered this,
lowering her voice.

“It was one of our young gentlemen, sir; there’s,
no doubt of it. Dolly saw one of them come in.”